Will Lindsey Graham start issuing some “radical” subpoenas now?

Jazz ShawPosted at 8:01 am on February 18, 2019

Andrew McCabe’s interview on 60 Minutes this weekend has plenty of people up in arms. What he thought he was going to accomplish by going public with all of his “recollections” of the early days of the Trump administration is debatable (though he does have a book coming out this week that he needs to promote), but he’s definitely provoked a response. This is particularly true of his claim that people in the Justice Department had conversations about possibly removing Donald Trump from office using a debatable clause in the 25th Amendment. That seemed to catch Senator Lindsey Graham off guard and now he’s talking about subpoenaing both McCabe and Rod Rosenstein to come to testify about it under oath. (Washington Times)

Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested he would subpoena former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCade and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein if necessary in order to get to the bottom of purported discussions at the Justice Department about invoking the 25th Amendment to try to remove President Trump from office.

“How can I not, if that’s what it takes?” Mr. Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“We’re going to find out what happened here and the only way I know to find out is to call the people in under oath and find out, through questioning, who’s telling the truth because the underlying accusation is beyond stunning,” said Mr. Graham, South Carolina Republican.

What’s being investigated here isn’t a crime. If “thinking about” or “talking about” removing the President via the 25th Amendment was a felony, most of the Democrats in Congress and nearly every reporter at CNN and MSNBC would already be doing time. But that’s not what’s at the heart of the question and we’re still not entirely certain that McCabe’s version of events is accurate.

For one thing, Rosenstein has already disputed McCabe’s story. He’s stated that claims of either having McCabe “wear a wire” to record conversations with the President or discussing the 25th Amendment option with him are “inaccurate and factually incorrect.”

But at the same time, McCabe told 60 Minutes that he had authored memos to the FBI file when all of this was going on and that Robert Mueller has those memos. Somebody isn’t telling the truth here, so perhaps Graham is onto something with the subpoena idea. We’ve seen enough people being convicted for lying under oath lately that neither of these guys would likely want to join that parade. If one of them takes the Fifth, we’ll likely be able to figure out who’s fibbing.

This entire conversation seems beyond strange. Why would the Deputy Attorney General be running around talking about the 25th Amendment? It’s not as if he was in a position to put something like that together. And if he really did discuss having McCabe wear a wire there would have to be a record of that. Denying it would only cause him more trouble. All of this leaves me wondering if McCabe isn’t either grossly inflating things or making them up entirely just to push sales of his book or to cause trouble for the administration. We may find out sooner rather than later.